Hilton Head beachgoers find bizarre 4-foot ‘pancake of a fish’ washing up in surf

There were cries of ‘shark, shark’ in NC waterway. But it was actually something cooler

A video posted to Facebook shows a fin swimming through the water and shouts of “shark” to swimmers participating in Wrightville Beach’s Swim the Loop. It actually appeared to be a large mola mola, or sunfish.
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A video posted to Facebook shows a fin swimming through the water and shouts of “shark” to swimmers participating in Wrightville Beach’s Swim the Loop. It actually appeared to be a large mola mola, or sunfish.
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A massive 6-foot sunfish washed up on an Australian beach last weekend. Passersby said they thought, at first, that was a large piece of driftwood, the BBC reported.

With its large dorsal fin sticking out of the water, a sunfish was mistaken for a shark last fall in the water off North Carolina.

A video posted to Facebook shows a fin swimming through the water and shouts of “shark” to swimmers participating in Wrightville Beach’s Swim the Loop. It actually appeared to be a large mola mola, or sunfish.

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Earlier this month, a rare hoodwinker sunfish — Mola tecta — washed ashore in California. The Mola tecta was first identified in 2017 and is not generally seen in the northern hemisphere.

The Atlantic recently wrote that the creatures are “fundamentally bizarre.”